So Far Yet So Close

As the year progressed and rolled with The Phoenix more and more I found myself harboring stronger delusions of posting a 2,000-mile cycling year — my first since 2003.

Certainly my involvement with the notorious and fictional IAAL/MAF bike gang and the mileage I accrued from our regular ridings during the summer helped stoke my confidence, but then came the end of daylight savings time and a noticeable increase in busier schedules was followed by a correlated drop-off among our core riders,  which preceded a hellaciously lucky high-speed downhill blowout The Phoenix suffered one pre-dawn Tuesday near the Silver Lake reservoir, and then a long and drawn-out rear-wheel rebuild. Unceremoniously drydocked, The Phoenix’s mileage stagnated at 1,553.

Certainly that didn’t stop me from riding. I busted out and dusted off my trusty old Giant OCR-3 roadie and through the end of October, November and the beginning of December had logged 316 miles, putting me at a total of 1,869 — nary 131 miles from the mountaintop.

Then with new rear sphere came The Phoenix out of her forced retirement to righteously roll the route of the Midnight Ridazz All-City Toy Ride, December 8… another 15 miles, all in.

But with the onset of this temp job I’ve not saddled up since and at this way late date I’m almost about to reconcile myself to getting **this** close — 116 miles away from the 2K mark.

Even if I do my El Segundo-and-back commute (34 miles) sometime this week and pedal my Big Fat Megaloop route at some point over the weekend (about 28 miles), that’s still going to leave me about 54 miles away from the summit.

And that’s fine. 1,946 aint bad and neither is 1,884…especially considering that I didn’t begin the year with anywhere near that many miles in mind, and didn’t really get rolling until the halfway point. It took me till the end of June to hit the 700 mile mark. I tallied up the next 800-plus miles by the time of the blowout four months later.

2007 though? It’s on! The goal is 2,007 miles, and I’m getting things started on Jan. 1, either via a Midnight Ridazz-ish New Year’s Day tour that’s being talked about, my own outrageous 58-mile This Is My Life ride, or something in between.

Away we go.